The use of viewing aids for the human eye has long been known in the art. Presently, a number of viewing aids utilize various image magnification and enhancement to better aid the human eye in viewing of a desired object, person or text. These existing devices, however, suffer from several shortcomings that hinder their effectiveness or a viewer's desire to use them.
Generally, in their most common form, these devices utilize an optical lens such as a magnifying glass to enlarge the view of an object as perceived by the human eye. Due to the convex nature of the lens, however, only a small portion of the lens may be effectively utilized for focusing on an object without undesirable shifting of the object from view, resulting in image stabilization problems that can be quite distracting to the user. Achieving focusing is also an issue which requires the user to physically move the glass in order to obtain a focused image. The optical lens also requires ample lighting for proper viewing. In addition, a typical magnifying glass only magnifies, and provides no additional features such as color contrast or other forms of image enhancement.
Other forms of magnifying glasses have tried to address the illumination issue by use of a lamp installed on some frame portion of the magnifying glass. This however, suffers from the shortcomings of loss of brightness from the light source as the gain to the image size increases. Furthermore, the provided illumination oftentimes lacks uniformity and typically cannot be adjusted in intensity. In addition, the foregoing problems of achieving focusing and lack of additional features such as color contrast or other forms of image enhancement still remain at issue.
A third form of visual aid is the use of electronic camera in conjunction with a separate video monitor. Disadvantages associated with this approach are the lack of portability of the whole system, complicated connections and setups, and excessive cost. In addition, human physiology may also be compromised in form of neck and back strain, and even nausea from visual disorientation as a user is required to constantly shift focus from the camera to the video monitor. In addition, the camera unit in this setting is fixed in orientation, thus requiring that the object be brought to the instruction, which may not always be possible or convenient.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus that is small in size, portable, and capable of providing illumination and a variety of image enhancement and magnification features to facilitate the viewing of an object by human eye.